Hi everyone,
If your team is aiming for faster releases with fewer headaches, one simple but powerful step in your testing workflow is smoke testing.

Smoke testing is about verifying that the basic and critical functionality of your application works correctly after every build. Think of it as a quick health check: instead of running exhaustive test suites, you validate essential paths — like login, basic CRUD actions, or key workflows — to make sure the build is stable before deeper testing begins.

Some benefits of smoke testing include:

Rapid feedback after each build

Early detection of major issues that would block further testing

Reduced wasted time running full test suites on broken builds

Higher confidence for QA and dev teams before deeper test cycles

I recently read a guide that explains smoke testing in a very practical way — what it is, how it differs from other test types like unit or end-to-end tests, and how to design simple but effective smoke checks for your projects.

Curious how others here integrate smoke tests into their CI/CD pipelines? What approaches and tools have you found effective?